Data Analytics: Accelerating The Velocity of Innovation
Enterprises are suffering a scarcity of insight. Think about it. There is an unprecedented amount of data in the world, and it is growing exponentially by the day. In fact, according to IBM, 2.5 billion gigabytes of data are created each day. This data is being generated by everything from smartphones to enterprise databases; scientific, […]
Does Google’s Knowledge Graph have a ‘facts’ problem?
Does Google’s Knowledge Graph have a ‘facts’ problem?: Maybe. It might, of course, be unwise for a single short response at the top of a set of search results to even try to ‘answer’ a question when we think, theorise or hypothesise towards an answer, rather than knowing it. I’m not suggesting, for a moment, that Google’s current […]
The Discriminatory Dark Side Of Big Data
It has happened again. Researchers have discovered that Google’s ad-targeting system is discriminatory. Male web users were more likely to be shown high paying executive ads compared to female visitors. The researchers have published a paper which was presented at the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium in Philadelphia. I had blogged about the dark side of […]
Open Source Software and the US Government
Open Source Software and the US Government: “…it has been determined that — in general — Members and staff in the U.S. House of Representatives, when conducting official business, now have a choice between using proprietary and closed technology and open source solutions that are restriction-free, reusable and frequently more cost-effective.” That this is news, […]
Products I Love to Use
Every year around the holidays journalists and bloggers around the world publish “top ten” lists or “annual buyer’s guides” or similar. And every year I think about doing the same. But it’s the holidays and I usually can’t be bothered. Plus, after reading everybody else’s list it feels pedestrian to publish mine. So I thought […]
Legacy tech can kill the CIO
Technical obstacles that interfere with the ability of IT to offer modern services to end-users. For example, allowing users to access all corporate services from mobile devices or providing them with sophisticated analytics tools can be difficult when the legacy infrastructure requires bolt-on products, patches, and workarounds. The CEO of Pegasystems, Alan Trefler, calls this […]
Some Thoughts on Twitter as a Micro-Blogging Tool
1/ Twitter started off positioned as a micro-blogging platform but in the end became more of an RSS reader — Mark Suster (@msuster) May 29, 2015 2/ @pmarca popularized the “Tweetstorm” which ironically brought the real concept of microblogging to Twitter many years after its inception — Mark Suster (@msuster) May 29, 2015 3/ What […]
Qlik gets cloudy, puts DataMarket to work
Qlik gets cloudy, puts DataMarket to work: On-premise visual analytics provider, Qlik, has rolled out a cloud-enabled offering that “supports the creation of dashboards and storyboards, and offers seamless sharing and interactivity, allowing users to share Qlik Sense applications” As Maria Deutscher notes in her SiliconAngle piece, this is partly about playing catch-up to the […]
When Google errs: A cautionary tale of great power
Update 4/28/15: Based on comments in response to this post, I did further research into the history of the cxotalk.com domain that I recently purchased. Based on many spam backlinks, there is no doubt this site had a bad history before my purchase. This leads to several conclusions: Before purchasing any domain at auction, be […]
An IT failure unicorn: Endless 19-year project in Massachusetts
On a regular basis, I receive calls from reporters and researchers writing about IT failures. Most often, they want context on how often these problems occur and who is to blame. However, recently, I got a different kind of call. Todd Wallack, a reporter for the Boston Globe, got in touch with a strange question. […]
IBM doubles down on health with Watson
IBM doubles down on health with Watson: Hot off its Jeopardy win, IBM’s clever Watson quickly started looking for problems that might help Big Blue recoup some of the project’s development costs. Healthcare was one obvious area, with relatively constrained sets of problems, copious data to ingest and understand, and oodles (a technical term) of […]
It’s time to reconsider, Google
Almost a year ago, Google made an apparently small change to Google Calendar. They started automatically adding Google Hangout video links to every new appointment. And it was bad. I’m sure you’ve all seen appointments like this pop up in your calendar. How do you join the meeting? Do you dial the phone number, or […]
RSVP for the Geek Train to .NET Fringe
The .NET Fringe Conference guests coming from northern Cascadia (north of Portland) will have the excellent benefit of taking the Geek Train to the conference. It’s also only $10 friggin’ bucks! RSVP link here | RSVP link here | RSVP link here | RSVP link here | RSVP link here Departure We’ll depart Saturday, April 11th at 2pm, with an ETA […]
A semantic journey
Gigaom announced their latest event; Structure Intelligence. “In the past year we’ve seen massive growth in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and deep learning. Our own Derrick Harris has been covering this area for years and we have decided it’s time to give this rapidly growing area a platform (and conference) of its own.” Personally, it’s great […]
Why Most Online Video Companies Will Fail
I live in LA and fund startups. So you can imagine that I see a lot of video startups. Most will fail. I repeat the same mantra to every one I see. “You can’t build a large online video company. You have to build a large online tech company that distributes video.” I try to […]
